Assessing validation effectiveness – results from a recent MEETS project and future plans

1. Assessing validation effectiveness – results from a recent MEETS project and future plans Anette Hertz, Head of section, Statistics Denmark (ahz@dst.dk)

2. Agenda • Introduction • Method to calculateefficiency • Problems encountered in the project • Results • Example from the project • Future plans • Comments

3. Introdoction • The motivation: • Weexperiencediminishingresources, howeverwetry to keep the same qualitylevel. Hencewe must be more efficient in ourvalidation of the Intrastat declerations. • How effectiveare the individualvalidation procedures? • Is it possible to optimize the validation of the Intrastat declarations by reorganizing the order of the validation procedures?

4. Method to calculateefficiency • The plan is to compareinitiallyreportedtrade to the final tradefigures. • How big is the change in: • Value • Quantity • Supplementaryunit • How manychanges of the type: • Change in date • Flow • Country • Transaction code • Commoditycode • PSI

5. Problems encountered in the project • Problems retrivingbefore and after data on some of the separate validation procedures • For somevalidation procedures it waspossible to do thisthanks to our status code system • Not possible to get an accurateresourceestimate • Weasked the clericalworkers for theirbestestimate • Still looking for a more accurateway to estimatethis

6. Results

7. Example from the project • The standard unit valuesare at the base of recontactingPSIs for validation of probableerrors • Sinceweonly send out letters to PSIs for validation in around 1% of the 36 miorecordswereceiveeachyear it is importantthat it is the right 1% we send out • Wefound out that the standard unit value check is not prioritized by the clericalworkers • The result: • The accuracy of the probableerrordetection model has decreasedbecause of this

8. Future plans • Plan to develope a more sophisticated status code system • Whenpossible to seperate the differentvalidation processes, analyze if resourcescanbediminished by reorganizing the procedures • Plan to measure the efficiency of VAT against Intrastat validation by running the statisticalproduction with and withoutthisvalidationprocess • Find ways to helpimproveour standard unit values and makethem more robust

9. Comments • Do you have anyexperience on: • Measuringefficiency of validation procedures • Estimate the use of resources • Validate and preserve standard unit values

10. Thank you for your attention Questions?